America has a history that has been dark and disturbing at times. People have been oppressed and persecuted for their beliefs, their religion, their color, and their sex. It is sometimes hard for young people to understand or appreciate the significance and importance of remembering our past. One such dark time occurred during the sixteen hundreds in Massachusetts. Cotton Mather was a leading Puritan religious leader who was responsible for many positive scientific advances, but is primarily remembered as a leading proponent of the dangers of witchcraft.
Mather did many fine things during his lifetime and was a prodigious writer. One of his works, "Memorable Providences", recounts a defining moment in his religious life. He was apparently called upon by a mason to evaluate the disturbing behavior of that person's children. They were experiencing terrible aches and pains and fell into fits of wailing and crying in unison. The minister concluded that the family's washerwoman had demonic powers and was torturing the children.
Today we have advanced methods for determining mental illness that were not known in the late sixteen hundreds. Massachusetts Puritans considered impure thoughts and actions responsible for any behavior that did not coincide with their beliefs. They lost all tolerance for individual expression and were quick to judge.
By the time the Salem witch trials got underway, hundreds of people, predominantly women, were accused or under suspicion. It became a way to settle old scores between rivals and feuding family members. They would simply accuse someone of being a witch and then watch as the rest of the town turned on that person. Many even believed smallpox infection was the result of devil worship.
The situation got so heated that many believed the pets of the accused could be affected by demons, which resulted in a number of dogs, cats, and other animals being killed for their association with so called witches. Any skin blemishes could be construed as the devil's work. Something as common as freckles was considered evidence of evil doing.
At the end of these trials, a total of twenty people were either hanged or stoned to death. Most of these were women. Some who escaped the death penalty died in prison while others were pardoned or escaped. George Burroughs, an ex-minister and one of those convicted, stunned the villagers who had come to see him hang when he recited the entire Lord's Prayer on the scaffolding. A witch would have been unable to do that, but against the pleas of the crowd, Mather urged the authorities to complete the sentence.
After the trials, when some women recanted their confessions, Mather came to doubt his previous convictions and attempted to minimize them in later published works. History however remembers this man for the flames of intolerance he fanned.
These events may seem outrageous to young people in the twenty first century, but it is not such a far cry from some of the rhetoric being spouted today. Wise people say unless we understand the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
Mather did many fine things during his lifetime and was a prodigious writer. One of his works, "Memorable Providences", recounts a defining moment in his religious life. He was apparently called upon by a mason to evaluate the disturbing behavior of that person's children. They were experiencing terrible aches and pains and fell into fits of wailing and crying in unison. The minister concluded that the family's washerwoman had demonic powers and was torturing the children.
Today we have advanced methods for determining mental illness that were not known in the late sixteen hundreds. Massachusetts Puritans considered impure thoughts and actions responsible for any behavior that did not coincide with their beliefs. They lost all tolerance for individual expression and were quick to judge.
By the time the Salem witch trials got underway, hundreds of people, predominantly women, were accused or under suspicion. It became a way to settle old scores between rivals and feuding family members. They would simply accuse someone of being a witch and then watch as the rest of the town turned on that person. Many even believed smallpox infection was the result of devil worship.
The situation got so heated that many believed the pets of the accused could be affected by demons, which resulted in a number of dogs, cats, and other animals being killed for their association with so called witches. Any skin blemishes could be construed as the devil's work. Something as common as freckles was considered evidence of evil doing.
At the end of these trials, a total of twenty people were either hanged or stoned to death. Most of these were women. Some who escaped the death penalty died in prison while others were pardoned or escaped. George Burroughs, an ex-minister and one of those convicted, stunned the villagers who had come to see him hang when he recited the entire Lord's Prayer on the scaffolding. A witch would have been unable to do that, but against the pleas of the crowd, Mather urged the authorities to complete the sentence.
After the trials, when some women recanted their confessions, Mather came to doubt his previous convictions and attempted to minimize them in later published works. History however remembers this man for the flames of intolerance he fanned.
These events may seem outrageous to young people in the twenty first century, but it is not such a far cry from some of the rhetoric being spouted today. Wise people say unless we understand the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
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